Claire stood up and walked toward an old wooden cabinet.
She opened the bottom drawer.
Then she pulled out a small box.
She placed it on the table.
“I kept these.”
Inside were envelopes.
Old envelopes.
Yellowed with age.
My name was written on several of them.
My hands began shaking.
I picked one up.
The handwriting was Claire’s.
I opened it.
The first sentence nearly destroyed me.
“I don’t know why you haven’t answered me, but I need you to know that I still love you.”
I looked at Claire.
“You sent this?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t I receive it?”
She opened another envelope.
Then another.
Every letter contained the same desperate attempt to reach me.
She had told me she was willing to move.
She had told me she would wait.
She had even written that she had found a job in the city where I was living.
I read one final letter.
It ended with:
“If you don’t want me anymore, just tell me. I can survive the truth. I just can’t survive wondering.”
I couldn’t hold the letter anymore.
It slipped from my fingers.
“Margaret kept these?”
Claire shook her head.
“No.”
“Then who?”
She looked at me.
“I don’t know.”
PART 5 — THE PHOTOGRAPH
Claire returned to the cabinet.
This time she pulled out a photograph.
She placed it in front of me.
It showed Claire, much younger, standing outside a hospital.
She was holding a newborn baby.
I stared at the photograph.
“Who is that?”
“My daughter.”
I smiled faintly.
“She looks like you.”
Claire didn’t smile.
“She looks like you too.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
Claire turned the photograph over.
There was a date written on the back.
I calculated.
My heart began pounding.
“That was…”
“Yes,” Claire whispered.
“That was nine months after the last letter I sent you.”
I stared at the baby.
Then at Claire.
“Are you saying…”
She nodded.
“She was yours.”
The room seemed to disappear around me.
“You had my child?”
Claire’s eyes filled with tears.
“I was pregnant when you left.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“Did Margaret know?”
Claire nodded.
“She came to the hospital.”
I stood up so quickly that the chair scraped across the floor.
“She knew?”
“She knew everything.”
PART 6 — THE CHILD I NEVER KNEW
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